FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ARTS

Steve Beazley, who stepped down last year as president and chief executive officer of the OC Fair & Event Center, has been tapped to play a similar role with the group seeking to bring the long-defunct Balboa Performing Arts Theater back to town. The Balboa Performing Arts Theater Foundation announced Tuesday that Beazley had come on board as its first chief executive officer. Beazley, who officially took the position Sept. 1, topped nearly 100 candidates for the position, according to Richard Stein, executive director of the nonprofit Arts Orange County, which assisted the foundation in the search.

COSTA MESA - Fighters came out in red and blue T-shirts with numbers on the back of them during the introduction portion of Fight Club OC on Thursday. A sports drink brand sponsored the professional boxing and mixed martial arts event, but in the fight game, the only numbers that count are the wins and losses in a fighter's record. The numbers on the T-shirts belonged to professional athletes in other sports. The fighters in the red corner sported Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim outfielder Mike Trout's No. 27 and the blue New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski's No. 87. One fighter continued the football theme inside the hangar at the OC Fair & Event Center.

Jocelyn Cartwright has no desire to be onstage. She's too shy to be comfortable under a spotlight. Plus, there's the question of training. The Montello, Wisc., resident doesn't need to be on the front line hearing applause, though. As head of wardrobe for Troika Entertainment, her domain is backstage. Making sure the actors are in costume in time for their cues stimulates joy, she said, adding, "I'm helping them get to where they need to be. " Cartwright, 34, will travel from San Diego to Costa Mesa with the cast of "Sister Act" for a stop at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts from Aug. 6 to 18. The religion-based story is a spinoff on the similarly named 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg.

Art, surf, skate, fashion and fun intertwined on the corner of Walnut Aveune and 3rd Street in Huntington Beach. The Vans US Open of Surfing is in full effect near Huntington Beach Pier, so that means there is plenty of great scenery outside Hurley Printing Press, a pop-up shop presented by Costa Mesa-based Hurley that is in HB for the week. Yes, the scenery comes in the form of California girls in bikinis and muscle-toned dudes. There were also bright colors and a cool party vibe inside the T-shirt printing shop that took the place of Livery Design Gruppe for the week.

This post has been corrected, as noted below. UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts recently revealed its upcoming season. The program extends from Oct. 3 to early June and highlights multiple disciplines. According to communications director Lesly Martin, program titles, such as UCI Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble concerts, Dance Visions, Physical Graffiti, New Slate and UCI Small Groups, remain the same from one year to the next. The content always changes, though, be it choreography, compositions, casts, guest performers or directors.

Sci-fi action films don't get much more basic than Monsters vs. Robots. The genre was first seen in those cheesy Japanese B-movies that began with the Godzilla series in 1954. But make no mistake, "Pacific Rim" delivers a first-class special-effects extravaganza of this classic plot theme. Giant creatures called Kaiju emerge from a fissure in the deep ocean to terrorize the coastal cities of the Pacific Ocean. The governments of the world combine forces to create giant robots to combat the monster menace.

By the time you enter the doors of the Orange County Museum of Art and look for the first work of art on display, you'll probably have stepped on it already. The Newport Beach museum's inaugural "2013 California-Pacific Triennial" exhibit, which opens Sunday, begins with an incongruous speed bump that stretches from the tree in front to a strip of lawn near the door. The speed bump is actually an installation by Chilean sculptor Sebastian Preece, who contributed other municipal-themed touches around the grounds.

In an article headlined "Why arts and humanities matter" (Los Angeles Times, June 20) James Cuno, chief executive and president of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, states that without citizens who can read, write and analyze, society falters and competitiveness suffers. He says that as students try to get into fields that offer higher pay — science, technology, engineering and math — they often neglect taking arts and humanities classes. He declares that institutions have responded by cutting budgets in those classes and argues that we should be investing more funds, not less, into these subjects.

A Costa Mesa-based karate studio helped to raise $10,000 through a charity golf tournament. Bob White's Karate Studio on Victoria Street hosted the June 18 event, called Golfing For Kids, at the Costa Mesa Country Club. The proceeds will go to Royal Family Kids, or RFK, which helps children who have been abused, abandoned or neglected. Bob White, a Costa Mesa resident, also organizes the annual Bob White Invitational karate tournament that raises funds for RFK. "I am sure [Golfing For Kids]

Newport Beach will probably change the way it tracks its public art pieces, updating records at least annually, City Manager Dave Kiff said in an email this week. Previously, the city hadn't regularly updated its inventory, he wrote, and as of Wednesday, five pieces - donated to the city or purchased at a combined value of $675 - were unaccounted for. Those were out of an inventory of 236 pieces with a total known value of $841,650. "We are not sure if the five are actually lost - it's generally our record keeping that has not been up to par," Kiff wrote.